I am an evil giraffe. Who no longer blogs about politics.

John Podheretz* is infuriated about the recent state-level corruption scandals in New York, and I don’t blame him one bit:

In rich countries and poor countries, dictatorships and democracies, politicians who wet their beaks usually do so in ways that at least seek to close the financial gap between them and the people from whom they’re taking the bribes.

But among the many distressingly low-rent qualities our politicians possess, none is more contemptible than just how cheaply they are willing to sell themselves. People who get caught in what appear to be open-and-shut corruption scandals are doing so for pennies on the dollar — pennies on the dollar, I tell you!

Read the whole thing: it’s depressingly hysterical. Incidentally, the word is coming down (H/T: Instapundit) that the second wave of corruption revelations that happened Thursday is not really related to the first; the only real similarity between the two is that in both cases apparently New York state legislators are downright eager to drop dimes on their compatriots in exchange for leniency. With any luck, this will end up scorching the earth of both parties (because God knows the NY GOP can’t really get worse)…